


Pandora's Box

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Action/Adventure, Community: sheppard_hc, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Off-World, On the Run, Shepwhump, Shit Hits The Fan, Team, Team Is Awesome, Teyla Is Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-10
Updated: 2012-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 07:49:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mission goes to hell and John is injured, requiring his team to hold it - and John - together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pandora's Box

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tepring in the Sheppard H/C 2011 Secret Santa exchange!

The force field surrounding the Stargate was the main obstacle to getting into the complex.

“Not insurmountable,” Rodney declared as he typed instructions into his laptop, trying to determine exactly how to bring down the force field. “Although someone’s screwed up the wiring... Let’s see...”

“Got any idea of how long it will take?”

“More time than it would if you stopped nagging me.”

John was tempted to say that he wasn’t nagging, he was asking, but he caught Teyla’s eye and left Rodney to it.

“Not very welcoming,” he murmured as he scanned what he could see of the underground gateroom through the rippling blue of the force field. It looked a little like the SGC - cement walls, steel reinforcings, light fittings - in short, your standard underground bunker.

“I do not think you will be offered tea today, John,” Teyla replied, almost up against the shield and peering through it.

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure I’d drink it around here.” The air was dry, but musty - old and unused for a long time. “How long has this bunker been around?”

Teyla looked at Ronon who shrugged and winced slightly as he rubbed at his shoulder where he’d landed after prodding the force field with his gun and being thrown back.

“Generations,” he said. “My granther’s granther had heard of it - they’d use it as an interim stop. Nothing attacking you from behind, and you could spend a few minutes getting breath and rallying before coming back out.”

John nodded. “And if you knew about the force field and the people chasing you didn’t...”

At best, it would be painful. At worst, you might go back through the event horizon - and then there was no telling what might happen.

“Yeah.”

“There were rumours of such a place among traders who came and went,” Teyla noted, once again playing her light through the shield, as though trying to make something out on the other side. “But a world with no trades, into which we could not enter for refuge... Such had no value to us.”

John could see that. It made sense - as did the attempts by other civilisations to get into the complex before. But whoever had locked up the secrets of this base had locked them up tight enough that it would take a Rodney McKay to get into them.

“So you have no idea what’s in here, and why they felt the need to protect it so well?”

“None at all.”

“Well, from the look of it,” Rodney said around the torch he’d stuck in his mouth as he poked and prodded at the ‘control block’, “nobody else knows, either. Because while this corner of the room looks like a war zone, it looks like nobody’s managed to actually bring the force field down... Until now.”

With a soft zap, the force field switched off, showing a roughly rectangular room that was a simpler, emptier version of the SGC Gateroom, with a corridor that led off the back wall and curved off deeper into the complex.

“Until now. Good work, Rodney.”

“It was actually rather easy. Seventy-three volts and a modulated frequency wave with a sub-frequency overlay at precisely one-third... Never mind. Give me a minute while I make sure the shield doesn’t come back up again...” There was a minute of fast and frantic keyboard tapping, and John moved up to stand next to Ronon where the big guy had moved towards the exit.

“Anything?”

Ronon gave him a look. “Don’t have spidey senses.”

Across the room, Teyla gave a laugh and they turned, but she was just listening to them, her hand drifting across the wall of the bunker as though testing its make.

“It is human-made,” she said. “Like the Genii tunnels...”

“But?” John prompted, hearing the way she trailed off.

“It’s not Genii.” Rodney disconnected the laptop and put it away, then took out a handheld PDA and began configuring it. “This is way beyond their level of technology. In fact, it’s way beyond the level of technology for anyone but the Wraith. Only, as Teyla’s just pointed out, this definitely isn’t a Wraith installation.”

John flicked his P-90 light down the corridor. The air behind the shield was ancient and unused, although still breathable - just. “You done yet, Rodney?”

“Patience is a virtue.”

“Note the irony?”

“Ha-ha. Okay,” Rodney slung his backpack up on his back and tapped the life-signs detector in his hand. “I’m ready.”

\--

John was no stranger to places where you spent most of the day indoors - Antarctica came to mind, although he’d been six weeks in the SGC during that stint when the Ancients took back Atlantis - but this was something else.

This place was creepy.

It wasn’t just that it was empty; it was just that it was _empty_.

Whoever had been here, they’d cleared out the place quite thoroughly.

“Or perhaps it has rotted with time,” Teyla suggested as they found yet another room bare of anything more than a little dust.

“Not likely,” Rodney said. “Whoever built this place knew how to make power sources capable of holding shields for hundreds of years - if not longer. Making things that last - like petrochemical plastics, for instance - would have been child’s play.”

John grimaced as they moved on down the corridor. They’d checked the first few rooms just in case there’d been anything left behind, but so far, nothing. A quick glance around at his team showed that they felt nothing - or else, they weren’t showing it.

The doors along the corridors stood open and unmoving. The architecture held echoes of Atlantis, but unlike the city, there was no welcome here for John. No lights, no windows, no movement, no life. Abandoned, deserted, shut down, unwelcoming... It was obvious that the place had been abandoned for decades - if not centuries. Yet the back of John’s neck itched, like the sensation of multiple unseen Kalashnikovs aimed at his back in the hot desert air.

At the next intersection, just beyond the doors, Ronon lifted his head, tilting his face this way and that as though testing the air. “Air’s freshening.”

“I’m guessing there’s some kind of automatic subroutine built into the system that turns on the air circulators once lifeforms are registered in the complex--”

“Rodney,” Teyla interrupted. “Perhaps it would be best if we located the power source?”

“Impatient, aren’t we? Energy signature points...that way.” Rodney indicated a branch corridor and after a moment, Ronon headed down it, leading the way. He moved cautiously, his weapon in his hand, but not up, as though he, too, felt watched.

Rodney followed along behind, and John gestured to Teyla, who hesitated, then went.

The corridors seemed long and overly-complicated, twisting back in on themselves innummerable times, until even John’s sense of direction was turned about.

Further into the complex there were signs of destruction - things that had been left behind and trashed by someone or something. Metal, mostly, twisted beyond recognition, and tumbled about with what looked like some stone and rock.

“Did the architect have some kind of moral objection to straight lines?” John wondered out loud as they passed another tangle of metal and rock, and the corridor doubled back along itself for the fourth time - or was it fifth?

“It is a maze,” Teyla murmured, glancing back at John. But why?”

“Maybe they liked mazes?” Rodney suggested, glancing back down at the life-signs detector that he’d calibrated to detect wall masses and open air spaces. “We’re nearly there. Just to the right here, then the end of the corridor and...”

Several yards in front, Ronon played his flashlight over the door at the end of the corridor - double-size, sliding, and with a doorpad next to it, with a keypad beside it. “Maybe their minds were twisted.”

\--

It took Rodney only a minute to get into the the room, and when the doors slid back, the team gaped at the setup inside.

“I believe that answers the question of who built this place,” Teyla murmured as they moved into a room filled with workstations that were set up almost exactly like the ones in the Atlantis control room.

“No-one’s been here in a while.” Ronon smeared one hand through the dust then grimaced as it coated his fingers instead.

“Like ten thousand years?” Rodney asked, already brushing off the clinging dust to try to find power outlets. “At least it explains why nobody got through the force shield until now.”

Teyla made a noise like a cough, and John looked over in time to see her mouth twitch slightly. She caught his eye and one corner of his mouth turned up in matching amusement at Rodney’s arrogance, even as he turned to do a recon of the space.

It wasn’t a very large room - about six by five yards, with hanging screens on which to display data, and there was no sign that anything had been touched in a very long time.

"Where's the power source?" Ronon asked.

"I'm looking for it!" Rodney glanced around the room, frowning. "It should be here. The readings say it's in here somewhere, but..."

"Perhaps they did not wish to leave it out for anyone to find."

"You mean 'out for anyone to find' in the centre of a maze of tunnels behind an impenetrable force field?"

"Maybe she meant 'anyone who wasn't an Ancient,'" John said mildly when Teyla didn't answer. It wouldn't be the first time the Ancients had treated them like kids straying into their parents' room, after all. But Rodney only shrugged.

"Maybe whoever built this place was paranoid."

"More paranoid than you?" Ronon smirked a little as Rodney glared, then tapped a few keys.

"Well, we'll find out in just a moment, if I can get the video working... Someone left a video log ready to be called up when the next person arrived. Let me just... And it should appear on that screen..."

In fact, it appeared on the screen next to it, brightening the entire room with the backlit glow - a man with a pale, angular face, his eyes sunken and tired.

“This is Telar Vantris of the Drenar testing laboratory. Jayavit and Callie have left and they should be raising the shield even now. I don’t have much time - the Drenar are awake and soon they’ll realise I’m the only one left here. They’ll come for me first before they think to spread out, and when they find no-one else here, they’ll settle into hibernation,” his voice trembled a moment before it firmed; the resolute tones of a man who’d chosen his death.

“You should find them still in hiberation, and when you do destroy them all. Don’t keep any for study or testing or breeding; no matter what you think, they can’t be controlled and can’t be tamed. And don’t hesitate. Because they were bred without mercy and they’ll show none to you. At all costs, you must keep them from leaving this planet.” He glanced off the screen, and paled further, if that was possible. “I’m out of time.”

The screen went blank and they were thrown back into darkness.

“That’s all there is for the last entry,” Rodney began, “although there are other logs. It’s weird, though, I still can’t locate the power source...”

“Forget the power source,” Ronon said. “We need to get out of here.”

John looked sharply at Ronon. “What is it?”

“Have you ever heard of the _drenondel_?” The question wasn’t addressed to John but to Teyla, who frowned.

“Only in stories. I did not think they were real.” She blinked and her eyes widened. “The Drenar?”

“It’s a variant name. And the _drenondel_ are real. Or were. There was a preserved carcass in the City Museum back on Sateda - someone found a pack a hundred twenty years ago.”

“How about you explain what a _drenondel_ is, first?”

Teyla and Ronon exchanged the looks that often got passed between them when they were trying to describe a concept that John and Rodney didn’t know. “A monster,” Teyla said after a moment.

“Hunting creature. Carnivorous - would hunt anything that moved - not always for food.” Ronon shrugged. “There were some on Sateda until they were hunted to extinction. At least one historical branch of Satedan Immortals called themselves the Drenar - they considered themselves the best of the best.”

John grimaced. Looking better and better. Although at least this explained why he’d been feeling uneasy before. “I’m guessing that whatever they turned them into, it’s not good.”

“They put a shield up to keep them from getting off-planet.”

Put that way, it was self-explanatory. John glanced at the screen, then at Teyla who looked steadily back, then at the door. “All right. We’re getting out of here.” He’d already woken up one set of monsters in Pegasus ahead of schedule, he didn’t want to be responsible for another.

“But--”

“Are there any other logs for the base?” Teyla inquired, cutting across Rodney’s instinctive protest. “Perhaps we could take those - the systems would be compatible with those in Atlantis, surely?”

“Yes, but--”

“Just do it, McKay!”

“Sheppard, this place has been shielded for hundreds of years - possibly thousands given that this room is of Ancient make. A source of energy that could maintain a shield for that long would be invaluable to us!”

“So are our lives,” Teyla murmured.

Rodney stared at her a moment, then huffed and began typing in commands to download the base logs. Knowing the other man, John figured the other man was _also_ querying the database to try to work out the location of the power-source. Which he didn’t mind, so long as Rodney was aware that their primary objective was now to get out of here alive.

Ronon crossed to the door, opening it and peering out into the darkness.

John drifted closer to Teyla. “What kind of stories are told about the...Drenai?”

“ _Drenondel,_ ” she corrected. “They are monsters. It is said they were changelings, once - capable of mimicking humans in order to hunt them. But they were cast down and turned into animals - although they can speak in the tongues of man and walk on their hind legs, and their paws extend to fingers.”

“So...shapeshifters. Sort of.”

“According to the stories.”

“Right. And the Ancients bred these things into...what?”

“Well, whatever it is,” Rodney said, “It’s not good news for us. I’ve pulled the log, along with the database - anything I could find out about these creatures, just in case. But I still think we should take a few minutes to find out about the power source.”

“I think we should move out,” Ronon said, pulling his head back from the door. “I hear something.”

That got everyone’s attention.

“How far away?” Rodney asked.

“Can’t tell. Echoes.”

John flipped his safety off as he went to the door and listened. The absolute silence had unnerved him before but the faint whisper of something else sent crawly shivers down his spine. “All right. Ronon, take point. Rodney, you’re next - you’ve got the map back to the Stargate. Teyla and I will bring up the rear.”

And if it came to a fight, he and Teyla would hold the Drenar off, giving Rodney time to get the shield back up again.

They moved out, moving far more quickly than they had on the way in. Things were tense enough that even Rodney made no protest.

If the maze had seemed endless on the way in, it seemed equally endless on the way out. Left and right became blurred, corridors seemed endless - and wasteful as they turned a corner and doubled back in the direction they’d just come. And in the silence beyond their movements, the darkness pressed down upon them and _something_ whispered faintly in the far-distant tunnels.

They reached a tangle of junk they’d passed on the way in. “Okay, we’re about halfway,” Rodney said as they skirted around it and started on down the corridor. “I remember this bit--”

What John remembered next was light and heat and force. It smashed into him, shoving him into Teyla. He tried to get his arms around her to protect her from the worst of the blast, but his P-90 was in the way.

Heat and light. Pain and shadow. Noise and sharpness.

There was cold floor under his hands, Teyla’s hair in his mouth, and pain in his right leg, fire stabbing through his thigh.

Then nothing.

\--

His thigh was burning agony, like a fire eating away at his leg. A headache lurked beneath the pain - had he hit his head.

Voices drifted above his head, echoing faintly, but when he opened his eyes, everything was dark. Shadows moved, the light shifting behind blurry but familiar profiles - Teyla and Rodney.

“How bad is it?”

“I do not think it has hit the artery.” Teyla’s voice was calm on the surface, but the faint tremble of breath as she inhaled told John that she was worried.

“It hasn’t. It’s not gushing.”

“Oh, thank you for that. Can you check-- Sheppard!”

A drifting touch on his leg was like knives being dragged through his flesh, and John jerked up - then wished he hadn’t. White spots burned into his vision and when they faded he was lying back on the ground, panting, with Teyla’s hand firmly pressing into his shoulder.

“We will need to get the shrapnel out first,” she was saying. “It seems to be mostly one large piece in his leg.”

John couldn’t see Rodney’s grimace, but he could hear it in his voice. “In the dark?”

“It’s the Drenar I’m worried about,” Ronon said.

“And if we do not get it out, then even if we carried him, it would tear his flesh.” Teyla sounded patient, but in the darkness, there was a distinct edge. “As you would say, Rodney, it is not rocket science.”

Ronon huffed, something like laughter. “Or brain surgery.”

“John?” Teyla leaned over him.

“Want it out.” They’d have to move, and he could move through pain - but not the kind of pain when something was stuck in there, ripping him up as he moved. “Just the leg.” There were other small stings all over his body - barely noticeable compared with his leg - but he’d live with them, and the aches and pains of his fall.

Teyla nodded. “Did you want to do it?”

“Not really,” came Ronon’s reply. “McKay?”

“I’m an astrophysicist, not a doctor!” Rodney snapped. Fuzzed with pain, John wasn’t sure if the humour was intentional or not. Did it matter? “I’ll hold his shoulders. Give him something to bite on, at least.”

They were his team, John told himself as the shadows shifted again. Teyla produced a wad of cloth that was probably a handkerchief, rolled it up and he took it between his teeth. No painkillers, no general anaesthetic, just field surgery.

This was going to hurt.

Ronon produced a knife and the flashlight. A moment later, Ronon’s hands came down on his ankles and he bit down on the fabric, and Rodney’s hands pressed down on his shoulders and Teyla’s hand gripped his for a moment.

“I will be swift.”

She was - swift and bloody. And painful, but there was nothing that could have helped that. John’s vision went white and red, and stars sparkled like rainbows as he clenched his teeth around the screams that wanted to bleed from his throat. Breath rasped through his teeth, and the thunderous beating of his heart drowned out whatever was said over his head.

Then it was done, and Teyla was dressing and binding his leg, her hands shaking slightly as she wrapped the bandages around him.

“Sheppard?”

John sucked in a deep breath and pushed past the pain. They didn’t have time to coddle him. He gritted his teeth and blinked the sweat away from his eyes as he spat out the wadded piece of cloth. “Get me up and let’s go.”

Rodney looked like he wanted to protest, but Teyla was fishing about in her pocket, and pulled out a packet of pills, two of which she gave to him, along with her water bottle. John thought about protesting that he didn’t need it, then decided that being an idiot wasn’t an option in this situation.

“How far away are they?” Teyla was asking Ronon as Rodney pulled out the life-signs detector again and began configuring it.

“Don’t know,” Ronon said, glancing back over his shoulder. Now that the pulse of pain had died down to a distant throb - although John didn’t doubt it was going to get worse when he stood up - he could hear distant noises - like howling, a long way off. “Closer than they were.”

“Helpful,” Rodney muttered between frantic tapping. “Okay, if we’re ready to keep moving again...”

They got John upright, Teyla under his right arm, a solid and reassuring presence. John was breathing hard by the time he was upright, but he shook his head when he caught her glance his way. “Get safe first.”

She nodded. “Ronon, take six. Rodney, go.”

\--

It was agonising - bearable, because John had a history of pain, but still exquisite agony. He fought back against the pushing, pressing ache in his limbs, the searing fire that felt like it was burning him to the bone and concentrated on getting one step in front of the other.

Sweat trickled through his hair, but he focused on the next step and the next. He could do that - concentrate on just his own body - because his team were there, looking after the rest of it.

Thank God for his team.

Rodney was guiding them, the faint glow of the life-signs detector in his left hand, his right gripped around his weapon. He’d be a questionable shot if anything came at them from the front, but he’d buy them a second or two.

Ronon covered their retreat, moving easily behind them. When - _if_ \- something came at them from behind, they’d be well-covered by Ronon.

And Teyla in the middle, holding him together, giving him something to concentrate on other than the pain of his body - the set of her shoulders, the wisps of hair that tickled his jaw as they limped along.

John let their conversation swirl around him, catching fragments as he forced the pain back by the simple expedient of thinking of something else - anything else!

“...listening to the audio logs. They were looking for another solution to the Wraith after the Asuran attempt didn’t work.”

“They did not learn the first time?”

“Apparently not. Anyway, they were trying to make something that could hunt the Wraith, so...it looks like they included Wraith genes as well as the Drenai ones.”

“ _Drenondel_.”

“Whatever. And, as these things always do, it went horribly, hopelessly wrong. Between the Drenar genes and the Wraith genes, the subjects went crazy. And that’s not the best of it, either. The subjects of the experiment? They were human - at least to start with.”

Dizzy with pain, John tried to assemble his thoughts, but he felt Teyla stiffen under his arm.

“Human? The Ancestors tested on humans?”

“This set did. Which is probably why it’s an underground base, built like a maze, with a force field to keep people out. Your standard Pandora’s box. Which, we’ve just opened again.”

“McKay,” rumbled Ronon from behind them. “Can we do something about the doors?”

“What?” Rodney glanced back, behind John, and John automatically turned to see - then gasped and slid against the wall as silvery pain sliced through his thigh.

“John!” Teyla’s arm tightened around his back. “Do not--”

He wasn’t about to. As though from a great distance, he could hear Ronon asking about the doors of the complex and Rodney giving an answer. Everything was white and silver stars, and scarlet heat along his leg.

“We don’t have time for this!”

“We’ll have to make a stand at some point,” Ronon was saying. “They’re too close. Teyla?”

“We will not make it back before we are attacked,” Teyla confirmed. “Anything you can do to make things more difficult for our pursuers would be good, Rodney.”

“And do you want a soda with that?” But Rodney was already tapping into the consoles. “Can we at least keep moving?”

“John?”

Sweat was trickling down behind his ear, and he forced himself to focus on the floor in front of him. “Keep moving.”

For a moment, he thought about asking them to leave him behind. But he knew better than to expect that they would. No-one got left behind, and nobody got to choose to be left behind if there was anything they could do about it.

 _Just go!_ Elizabeth had chosen her death, and as much as that failure twisted in John, he couldn’t fault either her choice or her courage. He knew what it was to be marked by fate; he’d just thought he’d be paying the price sooner.

His thoughts were drifting again, but it was better than thinking about the pain.

Much better than listening to the yips and yowls of the Drenar now echoing through the corridors - close, and getting closer.

They were going to get caught.

 _Hurry, hurry._ Every step was agony now, but he couldn’t stop - didn’t dare. _One foot, another foot._ John found himself breathing in and out to match his steps. _Keep moving. Just keep moving._ If he stopped, then Teyla would stop and Ronon would stop and Rodney would stop and they’d be that much further from the Stargate.

Something changed. John felt the change but didn’t know what it was until Teyla said, “That cannot be a good sign,” and her words fell into silence.

No sounds, no yapping, no echoes.

Eerie, blanketing silence.

“They’re hunting,” Ronon said, his voice echoing through the empty darkness. “Keep moving!”

They kept moving, almost stumbling along in their haste and injury. Rodney kept glancing behind them until Ronon growled at him to face forward. Teyla said nothing, but her breaths came steady and deep under John’s arm - a reassurance in the midst of what was coming very close to panic.

There was no warning.

One moment it was silent but for the slap of their bootsteps against the floor and the harsh, heavy breaths they took; the next moment, Ronon’s weapon was out and firing.

John shoved himself against the wall, pushing Teyla away and biting back the pain. “I’ll be fine. Go!”

He glimpsed her expression by the faint light of the torches and the flashes of Ronon’s weapon - concern and determination. Then she brought up her P-90 and began firing. Short, careful bursts, avoiding Ronon, who kept to one side of the corridor while she shot up the other. She stopped for two seconds, waited for Ronon to fling himself to the other side of the corridor, then began firing again, smooth as if they’d rehearsed it.

Maybe they had.

John tried to lift his own weapon and gritted his teeth as he braced himself against the wall. He got his P-90 halfway up before the world became white spots and the blurry dark-and-bright of his vision began getting even worse. He dropped the muzzle of the gun down again before he blacked out from the pain, unable to help them, unable to _fight_.

In short, he was useless.

Through the flashing stutter of gunfire he could almost see the Drenar - tall, whipcord-thin figures that lashed out with clawed hands. Mostly, what he saw was their shadows. They were humanoid and almost Wraithlike in build and motion - with a kind of serpentine swiftness to their movements. Their eyes shone catlike - eerie reflections gleaming as they sprang and snarled and swiped at Ronon, who fired shots into them without mercy.

Something ducked under his arm, and John nearly flinched before he realised it was Rodney.

“I’ve got the next set of doors,” Rodney yelled beneath the covering fire and Ronon’s roars of defiance. “Get back and we’ll retreat.”

He nearly protested, disoriented by the pain and the flashing light and the din of weapons fire in the small space. Then he realised that Rodney mean that they’d all retreat - and Rodney would close the doors to seal out the Drenar, buying them time.

“Teyla! Ronon!”

John winced. He didn’t usually think of Rodney as a bellower, but maybe it was just the noise.

Teyla called something back - John couldn’t make out the words, but they seemed to satisfy Rodney, because they started back along the corridor, John clutching at Rodney’s shoulder with his right arm, leaning heavily on the other guy.

Footsteps behind them - the slap of boots on the bare floor, under the chatter of Teyla’s gunfire. Then the buzz of Ronon’s gun picking up as the P-90 fire died. Hazily, John realised they were taking turns to cover their retreat.

Nearly past the doors. Four steps. Three. Two...

“We’re clear!”

“Move aside!” Ronon bellowed, and a moment later, Teyla came scrambling through after them, jamming another cartridge into her weapon with efficient precision and bringing it up to cover Ronon.

The shadows were almost on Ronon - _were_ on him. John saw the big guy lift a fist to punch out the first. But there were too many of them, inexorable and unstoppable.

“Ronon!” Rodney yelled. “Come on!”

John saw the shadow strike - saw the way Ronon flinched as though something had cut him. Then he was stumbling back past the doors, and for a wonder, none of them were following him. Rodney keyed something into the life-signs detector and the doors slammed shut on the Drenar to their howls and yips and snarls.

\--

“It won’t hold them off for long,” Rodney said as he and Teyla swapped places supporting, much to John’s relief. Leaning on Teyla was considerably more comfortable than leaning on Rodney since she fit neatly under John’s arm. And Teyla wasn’t going to fall out of step as she checked the life-signs detector every few seconds, either.

“It doesn’t need to hold them off forever,” John replied, settling himself over Teyla’s shoulders. “Just long enough. Teyla?”

“I am fine.”

“Ronon?”

Across the room, Ronon glanced up from the careful circle he was making with his arm and shoulder. He was bloody to the elbow, but the only sign that he was in any pain was a faint tightening around his eyes. “They learn,” he said, his voice rough. “They were going to rush us - all at once. We wouldn’t have survived the onslaught.”

John was about to point out that he hadn’t asked about the Drenar but about whether Ronon was okay to keep going, - not that it would have made much difference if he hadn’t been. Then he remembered, this was _Ronon_.

“Listen.” Teyla held up one hand.

Silence.

“Maybe they’ve given up?” Rodney said.

Ronon squashed that hope immediately. “More likely they know another way out.”

John took a deep breath. For a moment there, he’d hoped they could take a break. He should have known better. “Keep moving. Ronon, take point.”

He knew what he was asking. Injury and all, Ronon was still the best person to encounter the Drenar, who’d now be coming from the front rather than the rear.

They started out again, still moving far slower than John liked. Of course, he was the one setting the pace, so if they were moving too slowly, that was his problem. He could push himself only so far before the pain became too much.

There was a _lot_ of blood covering Ronon’s shoulder.

“Can you not close the other doors in the complex?” Teyla asked Rodney as they eased their way along the passage. “To block them off from all sides?”

“If we did that - if we even could - that would block us in here, too.” Rodney snapped. “There are doors between us and the Stargate.”

Ahead of them, Ronon turned a little. “Open them manually?”

“Look, we don’t have enough power to close all the doors in the complex. I mean, I can send a command a short distance - say, five to ten yards. But there’s not enough power being fed to the bunker’s infrastructure for a complex-wide command. All the power from whatever energy source they were using here - which, by the way, we never got to actually look at - is going towards the shield. There was a tiny amount diverted to the control room which is why we managed to run the video log and download the other logs in audio, but we’re otherwise out of juice.”

“So....can’t be done manually?”

“That’s what I just said!”

Under John’s arm, Teyla gave a huff of what sounded rather like laughter .He wanted to laugh himself - amusement pushed back the pain, if only for a moment. It was better than thinking about the kind of damage he was doing to his body - and he didn’t heal so fast or so cleanly as he had ten, or even five years ago...

 _Get out with your life, then worry about the leg..._

Pain and ache, pain and ache. It ate away at him, wearing him down a little at a time. Gentle as Teyla was in their movements, she couldn’t cocoon John from the worst of it: the betrayal of his body as he pushed himself to his limits and found them shrinking.

“That’s the first intersection up ahead,” Rodney said. “Only a couple of hundred yards now...”

It might as well have been the moon, for the amount of pain John was in.

Sweat poured off him like tears, trickling down his brow and into his eyes - he might have been crying, too, but it was impossible to tell. Teyla shot him worried glances, but she didn’t ask and didn’t falter, and her strength - and her acceptance of his strength - bolstered John’s endurance, for what little that was worth.

Pain was a red cloud from his right hip downwards, concentrated at his thigh like something red-hot bound to his bone.

And he was beginning to think he could hear the whispering again - the distant scrabbling sound of the Drenar chasing them, having found a new route through the maze to cut them off.

“Any more doors?”

“Only around the room we entered,” Rodney said sharply. “And I repeat - five to ten yard clearance for door commands!”

“We are not going to make it,” Teyla said, more under her breath than out loud as they passed the intersection. “Wait-- John... Ronon! Rodney!”

John caught the wall with one hand, pushing against it to try to keep himself up. “I’m fine.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her shoulders heaving. Wisps of hair had escaped her ponytail and were stuck to her throat. In the shadows, they seemed almost like claws around her throat as she looked up at John. “But we will not reach the gate before they are upon us.”

The scrabbling was louder, the echoes blurring each other as the Drenar got closer. John shut his eyes and trusted to his team to sort things out, gathering his strength for the last desperate run.

“Is he okay?” Rodney asked, but Ronon was faster to see that this wasn’t just about John.

“What’s your plan?”

“You take John while Rodney goes and get the shield up.”

John’s eyes flew open as Teyla began to move out from under his arm, ceding him to Ronon. His breath caught, but he only managed a, “Teyla...”

Unburdened by an injured leg or an excess of trust in Teyla’s skills, Rodney managed a lot more. “You’re not staying behind alone! Look, I’ll take Sheppard, and Ronon can...”

“Rodney.” Teyla’s voice was an anchor of calm amidst Rodney’s concerned panic. “You can bring up the shield, and Ronon can carry John that far. I believe I can hold them off.”

“You _believe_?”

But Ronon already had John by the arms, and Teyla was stepping away with the kind of resolution John had seen in men about to take a last stand. It left a sickening hollow in his belly, and he wanted to protest, but the words dissolved into pain as Ronon began to haul him up.

“Don’t need to be carried,” John managed. He wouldn’t be carried like a child, and he couldn’t fight Teyla - she had it right. She was uninjured and capable of holding them off...maybe. But she’d need all the advantages she could get. Dizzy from pain and exhaustion, John fumbled at his vest. “Teyla...”

She nodded, and accepted the cartridges he handed her, adjusting her earpiece as she addressed Rodney. “Call me when you are ready to bring up the shield.”

“You,” Rodney said in the brusque tones of someone fighting the desire to be really really furious, “are crazy. They’ll kill you!”

“Perhaps,” Teyla said. “But they are Wraith.”

And without a further word she strode down the cross corridor.

“But they’re not!” Rodney said as John adjusted his grip around Ronon’s back and shoulder and began to limp the last few yards to the corridor. “I mean, they’re part Wraith, but that’s no guarantee...”

“Go and get the shield up, McKay!” Ronon growled. “I’ll bring Sheppard.”

By which he meant Teyla was buying them time, and Ronon wasn’t going to argue the price at this moment. John understood that as though Ronon had said as much. Gunfire started up behind them as Rodney scrambled for the gateroom, and John and Ronon limped along to the ear-shattering noise.

“If anyone can, Teyla can,” Ronon said.

“Is that...reassurance for you...or me?”

Ronon snorted. “Both?”

John huffed, almost amused. But his leg was burning and his body was burning, and it was only fifty yards. Then twenty. Then ten. Then...

Rodney was cursing over the control block.

“Can you get it up?”

“Of course I can!” Then, after a few more taps. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know!”

“I didn’t,” Ronon returned, easing John down to the floor by the control block. He reached for his earpiece. “Teyla, we’re here.”

Gunfire still echoed down the corridor. As the ice of the floor and the wall seeped into his back and butt, John blurrily thought that she must be out of ammo by now...

As though on cue, the gunfire stopped.

 _Shit._ He tapped his earpiece with a hand that shook. “Teyla, come in.”

“Oh, no.” Rodney was saying. “No, no, no...”

“McKay!”

“I can’t bring the shield back up. The power expenditure to initialise the shield is greater than is left in the energy source that was maintaining it.”

Ronon swore in Satedan - a long fluid string of slurred words that sounded utterly vicious. “So we can’t stop these things from getting out?”

“John?” Teyla’s voice came clear through their earpieces. “Are you there?”

“Teyla?” Relief was momentary. The gunfire hadn’t started up again and Teyla sounded strained. And the world was beginning to twirl around John, threatening oblivion. He couldn’t afford that. “What’s happening? Talk to me.”

“I am...” She paused. “They are fighting. I can hold them...”

“Get back here!”

“The shield?”

“McKay can’t get it up,” reported Ronon.

“That sounds so wrong,” Rodney muttered. “We’re going to have to blow up this place! Preferably not with us in it!”

John gritted his teeth. “We’ll set charges. Radio signal. Go through to Atlantis, blow it then. Teyla, come back.”

“I can hold them.”

The reassurance was not what he wanted to hear. John took a deep breath. “I’m not telling Torren I left his mom to die in an underground bunker fighting monsters. Get back here!”

Her laughter was a short spurt of breath into the earpiece. “Rodney, can you close the doors to the gateroom?”

“Yes.”

“Then I am coming.”

It was on John’s lips to ask what she would have answered if Rodney hadn’t been able to close the gateroom doors, but his vision chose that moment to waver, and when it stabilised, Ronon was kneeling in front of him, riffling through his vest pockets for the block of C4 and the charges.

“Sorry. Just needed a few things.”

”Teyla?”

“I am here,” she said, limping into the gateroom, her jaw stiffly set. “Rodney?”

A stream of ‘Oh, no, no, no’s were issuing from Rodney - not a good sign in the best of circumstances, which this certainly wasn’t.

“Rodney!” The tension in her expression didn’t ease back.

“I can’t. Look, I just... Hold on, okay? I’m trying...”

“Get the charges positioned and ready,” John told Ronon, seeing as it didn’t look like Rodney was going to pull a miracle out of his ass. “Teyla, hold on. McKay, either get the shield up or those doors closed!”

And he concentrated on remaining conscious - harder than it looked.

Movement as Teyla crouched down beside him. “I am not the only one who needs to hold on,” she said wryly. Then she was easing herself under his shoulder. “We will dial the gate.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad enough,” she said after a moment. Her eyes had the unfocused look they sometimes took on when she was ‘going Wraith’ as Rodney unhelpfully had termed it. “It is not the same as Wraith, although close. Their patterns of thought do not...” She hissed, and froze under his arm.

“Rodney!”

“Look, I’m doing what I can and it’s not working...”

“Dial the gate, then!” Ronon yelled, prepping detonators and mashing them into the blocks of C4. He ducked out into the corridor and stuck one up on the wall, then dodged back, shooting at something that scuttled free of Teyla’s mental grasp.

That was what John figured she was doing anyway - what glazed her eyes and made her movements just a little slow.

Rodney dialled the gate as John and Teyla limped to one side to avoid the particle backlash... Teyla was trembling, her body jerking slightly against John’s.

“Hey,” John said, half into her hair. It still smelled of herbs beneath the sweat. “You okay?”

“I will be,” she said. “You?”

“Yeah.”

Then the Gate was open and Rodney had his other arm and was yelling at Ronon. Teyla and he started the most uncoordinated three-legged race ever, and the event horizon slapped John in the face. Then he was plunging through infinity and suddenly hoping that someone had sent the shield codes through or they were going to hit the shield in Atlantis like bugs on the windshie--

Sunlight and skylight, familiar shapes and sounds. Alarms and shouting. The call for medical. A hand on his back that felt too big for either Teyla or Rodney - Ronon was through then. Teyla ordering the shield up in hoarse tones, as something behind him beeped.

John dragged in a breath of fresh air and let himself sag against his team, barely jerking as there was a flash of light behind them, muted by the shield, which he supposed was up because they weren’t feeling the blowback.

And just as suddenly he felt lightheaded and there was something dripping down his leg. The shouts around him grew louder as the brightness of the city grew too great for him to bear with his eyes open.

Somewhere in the brightness, he felt himself lowered to the ground. There were hands pressing on his thigh until his teeth felt like they were going to meld into each other. Brisk footsteps gave way to brisk questions, something blessedly cool pressed against his neck, and...

\--

John drifted in and out of consciousness for a while.

Voices floated around and about him, and his body seemed to belong to someone else. The pain was gone - for which he was really thankful - but there were things that didn’t feel quite right, either.

Sometime between bright overhead lights and patches of darkness, John found himself staring blearily at a blurry form that he figured was Dr. Keller. She peered at him over a medical tablet, startled.

“Colonel? You shouldn’t be awake...”

He tried to ask about his team - were they okay? Had they sealed off the Drenai labs? What about the monsters? His lips wouldn’t form the words, and even opening his mouth exhausted him.

“He’s starting to struggle, Dr. Keller...”

“Heartrate’s increasing. We could put him under again...”

“I’d rather not, but his body needs the rest for the moment...”

Blurry forms shifted, yellow being replaced by comforting maroon and a small, dark figure reached a hand out to touch his - fingers warm against his cold skin. He concentrated and Teyla swam into focus, looking close to exhausted herself.

“We are fine, John. Ronon and Rodney and I. Is that what you wanted to know?”

It was. John thought he managed a nod before his gaze blurred and he drifted back into darkness, relieved that Teyla had been there to give him the reassurance he needed. His team was home safe, they’d made it out alive, and the Drenar were dead...perhaps...

The next time when he woke up, his leg hurt.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Rodney said, barely looking up from his screen. “How’s the leg?”

“Sore.” So were John’s lips - cracked and dried out. “Any water?”

Rodney waved an unhelpful hand towards the cooler at the other end of the room.

“Rodney.”

“I’m not sure that you’re even supposed to be having anything.” He folded up his tablet. “But I’ll ask.”

“Please.”

Rodney even brought him the cup. John swished the first mouthful around his mouth, then followed it with the rest of the liquid. It was glorious down his throat, even if it meant he’d probably have to have a catheter at some stage if they hadn’t already...

“So, I guess you want to hear what happened after you nearly bled out on the gateroom floor?”

“That’s what happened?”

“Apparently the shrapnel Teyla pulled out was a big one - although she was right to pull it out. Jennifer thinks that you’d have bled out on the way home if it had been left in... And you don’t want to hear about that.”

“Skip to the part about the installation.”

“Well, we sent a probe back through and the room was mostly collapsed, with quite a lot of rubble on the DHD, so it looks like destroying the bunker worked. I thought the next time Caldwell drops by, we get him to take us to the planet and check it out from orbit instead! Now that the shield is down, it should be as easy as beaming in and beaming out of that control room, and we’ll have the time to explore...”

John caught Ronon’s eye as the other guy came in, and shared the grin of people accustomed to Rodney’s passions.

“How’s the leg?”

“Better. How’s the shoulder?”

The injury looked impressive - a thick slash of red scab that jerked as Ronon shrugged. “Better. McKay tell you about Drenar Base?”

“He’s already mentioned going back.”

Ronon looked at Rodney, who looked defensive. “I wanted to get the idea in before we went out on the next wild goose chase!”

“Wait until he’s up and running before suggesting the next course of action.”

John wasn’t sure whether to laugh or protest Ronon’s view of him. But he was feeling kinda tired, and much as he was glad to see the guys, his eyelids were trying to seal shut now that he’d had a drink of water and...

This time, he woke up and his leg still ached, but he actually felt...awake. No fuzziness, his mind clear, his thoughts sharp.

He turned his head and it seemed to be daylight - at least, that was what he guessed from the light levels in the infirmary. No IV, although his hand still had the tape on it. He shifted his hips experimentally and winced at the twinge from his leg. Definitely not healed, and he could see a couple of months’ worth of hopping around on crutches and enough physiotherapy to drive a man insane.

A screeching yelp turned his head. At this angle he couldn’t see into the next room, but he didn’t need to - nobody in Atlantis shrieked like that except Torren. John moistened his lips and took in a breath to call out.

It came out as a croak. Weak and barely audible, and John drew breath to try again just as Torren toddled in, nearly tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to go. A moment later, Teyla was after him, scooping him up with an admonition to be quiet.

“John is...” She trailed off, shadowed eyes surprised before they softened in a smile. “Hello.”

“John is awake,” he said. “Hey.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like I got chased by monsters through an underground maze with an injured leg.” He exhaled. “They tell me you saved my life.”

Torren was trying to climb the bedframe, and Teyla hoisted him up. “Consider it repayment for the times you saved mine. No, Torren.”

John grinned as little hands reached out in a futile attempt to reach his bed. If he hadn’t had the leg, he wouldn’t have minded, but the leg - while making it all very exciting for Torren - wasn’t up to a two year old boy climbing all over it.

“John!”

“Hey, little buddy,” he said. “I can’t hold you right now, because I’ve hurt my leg. Did your mom tell you?”

Little eyes went huge as Torren nodded, taking his paw out of his mouth. “Monsters.”

“Pretty much.” John sighed and settled back in the bed, studying Teyla as she smiled and kissed her son on the top of his head. The affectionate gesture didn’t hide the hollows under her eyes. “Are you okay? After the Drenar?”

Teyla leaned her hip against the bed and wrapped her arms more firmly about her son. “They were human once, John. And although they had been in stasis for so long - since the time where the Ancestors had governed Pegasus - they remembered. Sea and sky and sunlight - forever barred from them.”

“And the Ancients did that to them.”

“I have listened to the logs,” she said, her voice steady. “They began with the _drenondel_ at first, then, when the animals proved incapable of the reasoning they needed to be suitable hunters of the Wraith, they switched to a human base. Carson has looked at the test notes Rodney downloaded and he believes...he believes the humans went mad - in the darkness of the maze and in the darkness of their minds. And then they were unsuitable for hunting Wraith, because their creators could not be sure they would not turn on them.”

“Teyla...”

John hesitated then, thinking of a white-haired male, caught somewhere between human and Wraith, bitterness staining his every thought, word, and deed. And yes, Michael had made his own choices, but Atlantis had set him on that path.

What was the saying? The apple never falls far from the tree?

“It was right to end it,” Teyla said after a moment. “To close Pandora’s Box.” In her gaze, John saw a windy ledge over a long drop, and her boots coming down on Michael’s hands - murder, yes, but also a mercy.

“I know,” he said simply and let the words stand between them.

Meanwhile, Torren had been patting down Teyla’s jacket, until he found what he wanted in the right inside pocket - the one that Rodney joked could fit a kitchen sink and who knew what besides - and tugged at something that Teyla brought out - the iPad John had picked up while back on Earth.

Torren reached for it, delighted.

“Torren! That is John’s!” Teyla tried to take it from him, occasioning a squeal of protest and a flood of tears.

“Hey, no, it’s okay, little buddy.” John held out a hand for the iPad. “Your mom brought that for me, but we’ll play it together for a while, okay?”

“Okay! Mama?”

One of Teyla’s brows arched in delicate question, and he nodded ever so slightly and indicated his better side. Torren could curl up there and they’d play It would be okay.

He met Teyla’s eyes and smiled, met her answering smile, faintly shadowed.

They’d be okay.

 


End file.
